The effectiveness of the Allied Strategic Bombing Offensive

… Germany had to devote vast resources to fend off the bombers. Goering had to deploy 8,876 of the formidable 88 mm flak guns, the most effective artillery piece of the war, and one which, when supplied with armour-piercing ammunition, was equally effective against tanks. The flak units also deployed some 25,000 pieces of 20 mm and 30 mm cannon. To put these figures in perspective, Rommel's Afrika Korps, about to attack the British in the Western Desert in the autumn of 1941, had just 35 of those useful 88 mm guns. To man these guns, the flak regiments in Germany required some 900,000 fit men; Rommel's army for the defence of Normandy in 1944 numbered around 500,000 men. Those men and guns tasked to flak units might have proved very useful indeed had they been deployed on the Western or Eastern Fronts in the anti-tank or artillery role, rather than for the air defence of the Reich - where another million men had to be constantly employed clearing up and repairing bomb damage. It is also a fact that the Allied bombing campaign forced the Germans to concentrate on the production of fighters - especially night fighters - and diverted their resources away from the development of a long-range bomber which might have carried the war to Britain and beyond after 1941.

There can be no doubt that tactical bombing was of inestimable help to the ground troops in many Second World War campaigns, and this help is easy to assess. An attack is held up, the bombers or ground-attack fighters arrive and blitz the enemy, resistance subsides, and the attack moves forward - simple.

The effects of strategic bombing are harder to gauge, because the results come more slowly. It is the gradual degradation of the enemy's military-industrial complex, the destruction of the means for normal life to continue, the need to divert resources in guns and aircraft to home defence that represent the true contribution of the strategic bomber to the overall conduct and outcome of a war.

Because such results are neither immediate nor clear-cut, the benefits of a strategic air campaign are less easy to verify, but that strategic bombing had a considerable effect on the outcome of the Second World War cannot be denied. By 1944, resisting the bombing offensive was costing Germany 30 per cent of all artillery produced, 20 per cent of heavy shells, 33 per cent of the output of the optical industry for sights and aiming devices, and 50 per cent of the country's total electro-technical output, all of which had to be diverted to the anti-aircraft role. (pp 384-5)